Open AccessTaxonomic and thematic semantic systems.
Author(s) -
Daniel Mirman,
Jon Frederick Landrigan,
Allison E. Britt
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
psychological bulletin
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 10.737
H-Index - 313
eISSN - 1939-1455
pISSN - 0033-2909
DOI - 10.1037/bul0000092
Subject(s) - semantic memory , cognitive science , cognition , thematic map , psycinfo , cognitive psychology , perception , semantic similarity , psychology , semantic integration , categorization , cognitive neuroscience , computer science , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , semantic computing , medline , neuroscience , biology , biochemistry , semantic web , cartography , geography
Object concepts are critical for nearly all aspects of human cognition, from perception tasks like object recognition, to understanding and producing language, to making meaningful actions. Concepts can have 2 very different kinds of relations: similarity relations based on shared features (e.g., dog-bear), which are called "taxonomic" relations, and contiguity relations based on co-occurrence in events or scenarios (e.g., dog-leash), which are called "thematic" relations. Here, we report a systematic review of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience evidence of this distinction in the structure of semantic memory. We propose 2 principles that may drive the development of distinct taxonomic and thematic semantic systems: differences between which features determine taxonomic versus thematic relations, and differences in the processing required to extract taxonomic versus thematic relations. This review brings together distinct threads of behavioral, computational, and neuroscience research on semantic memory in support of a functional and neural dissociation, and defines a framework for future studies of semantic memory. (PsycINFO Database Record